30,000 francs per year if you look after the children at home: this is what a cantonal initiative promises. The fact that the proposal came from the SVP of all people is not without a certain irony.
There should be financial compensation for families who look after one or more children at home.
Day care places are scarce – in Geneva just as elsewhere. According to an analysis by the cantonal audit office, the city alone lacked more than 1,100 places last year, and the problem is no less acute in the surrounding communities.
In view of this emergency, the SVP Geneva has now launched a cantonal initiative: Families who look after one or more children at home should be financially compensated – a classic “herd bonus”. A household would receive no less than 30,000 francs if at least one parent was not gainfully employed. That’s how much a daycare place costs the general public according to the party’s calculations. In other words, if the state were to meet the demand for childcare places, it would cost it the same, bottom line.
The SVP wants to put all family models “on the same level”. It is to be welcomed that Geneva – and beyond – is now holding a new kind of public discussion about the role of the state in childcare. The proposal itself, however, points in the wrong direction in several respects.
setback for equality
According to the text of the initiative, it would not matter whether the mother or father stayed at home. In practice, however, it is still mostly the woman who takes care of the children while the man “brings the money home”. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine what would happen if this family model were made even more attractive with a considerable sum: People would live it more.
But that would be going in the wrong direction, both from an economic and gender perspective. The vehement AHV referendum campaign recently brought to mind that women receive lower pensions overall – which is largely due to the fact that they are more often employed part-time or not at all and therefore pay less into the second pillar. The problem would only get worse if this traditional role model – which the SVP Geneva does not even try to conceal as a goal – were promoted.
As far as the rampant shortage of skilled workers is concerned, taking that of teachers as an example, it would help a lot if there were less part-time work in general. It goes without saying that the authorities must create the framework conditions for sufficient external childcare.
False incentives and waste of money
Last but not least, the Geneva proposal would entail absurd side effects for the economy as a whole: a family in which one partner earns half a million francs a year and the other does not work would also collect the 30,000 francs for childcare, although they did not need to Has.
In short: the initiative creates false incentives and unnecessarily squanders tax money. The fact that it comes from the SVP of all people is not without a certain irony – in two respects. It is the largest party in the country, which otherwise never misses an opportunity to denounce the rising state quota. And: migrant families would benefit above average from the measure, since they Federal figures make significantly less use of extra-family care.
If there’s a canton that can’t afford such financial gambles, it’s Geneva. He has by far the highest debt and the financial prospects are not getting any rosier. For next year, the budget provides for a minus of a whopping 419 million francs.
In the face of these challenges, more, not less, fiscal discipline is required. A “herd bonus”, which would cause massive additional costs and also a step backwards in equality between men and women, is quite an odd thing in the landscape.